I would love to see The Night of the Hunter, Metropolis, and Casablanca (Just to see what kind of bonus features they’d put with it).
Oh goodness The Devils. The Devils. Why isn’t anyone listening?
Imamura’s Ballad of Narayama is brilliant and the anime eigo release is passable at best.
When I saw the title of the thread I immediately thought: Polanski’s Repulsion, which I see was also on the mind of many of you. Nic eto see I’m in good company.
Also:
Zwigoff’s Crumb
O’ Russell’s Spanking the Monkey
VonTrier’s Breaking the Waves
Bunuel’s Belle de Jour
I’m waiting.
Local Hero
Lubitsch!!!! So hard to find…
Seconds from John Frankenheimer with Rock Hudson and has a kick ass opening title sequence by Saul Bass! Oh and how about The Long Goodbye from Robert Altman with Elliot Gould and other Altman regulars. Has a bad ass ending!
I want Darjeeling Limited but I’m sure that’s coming sometime in the future.
Personally I’d like to see all of Michel Gondry’s films get the Criterion Treatment:
Eternal Sunshine
Science of Sleep
Dave Chappelle’s Block Party
Be Kind Rewind
And I would love to see Chan-Wook Park’s films as well:
Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance
Old Boy
Sympathy For Lady Vengeance
I’m A Cyborg But That’s Okay
Oh and some Takashi Miike films would be nice too.
Guillermo Del Toro’s Cronos and Scorsese’s two comedies King of Comedy and After Hours!
I think the general rule is – if Kino, Sony or Warners hold the rights, then forget it. Criterion has picked up a few New Line and Fox things however.
It’s just a speculative impression, but it does strike me that getting films from countries with nationalized film industries seems to advance at a snails’ pace, when they can get them at all. I think there’s a lot more Russian/Soviet stuff they’d like to do, and have the connections to do, but getting it to happen quickly is another story. Ditto for the lack of Chinese and Indian films; I’m almost certain that there are things from both countries that they’ve either tried to get, or are working on now, but having it see light of day might take a considerable amount of time. I don’t know the structural nature of the film industry in various Latin American countries, but I wonder if it’s the same deal there – there’s plenty of ‘golden age’ Mexican cinema (like some of E. Fernandez’ things) that would probably be well worth exploring…
There’s a lot of worthwhile, undistributed (or poorly distributed) contemporary cinema from around the world, and I would expect that Criterion would stand a better chance of getting some of that than much contemporary US stuff. It would be a lot of work to sift through it all however, and people like Kino, Facets and TLA have been very aggressive in going after some of that, albeit not enough, and usually in bare-bones editions.
There wouldn’t be a lot of $ in it, but it would be cool to see them do a package of contemporary shorts: an assembalge of worthwhile NYFF/Toronto/Sundance/Full Frame/etc. shorts…
I’m bewildered there are no Werner Herzog films (burden of dreams doesn’t count)
If there could be a Criterion edition of Blue Velvet, I would die happy.
There are so many great choices and since I do not want to leave off anyone that mentioned many of the great ones, I will just add…
Mating Habits of the Earthbound Human (docu-comedy/farce that has respect of those that can find it)
The Blair Witch Project (there has been enough time for a retrospective analysis especially with the “shaky cam” in tons of recent films)
Track 29 (A quality Roeg film)
I would also like a “Drive-In Collection” similiar to the excellent “Monsters and Madmen” box. This way deserving public domain classics like “Night of the Living Dead” can get decent editions and still sell well enough to warrent their inclusion.
Claude Chabrol’s “Le Boucher”
“Natural Born Killers”
Vincent Ward’s “Vigil” along with his early short films “A State of Siege” and “In Spring One Plants Alone”
“1984” with William Hurt and Richard Burton.
It’s been out of print for awhile.
I don’t have time to read this entire thread and I don’t even recall if I’ve posted in it already, but I was psyched to find out that Paris, Texas and Wings of Desire are allegedly confirmed upcoming releases from Criterion. They’re both currently out of print in the US as far as I can tell.
Also, will The Darjeeling Limited eventually come out on Criterion? I’m really not expecting it. I don’t know how Criterion’s relationship with Fox is. I suppose it’s definitely possible and hopefully it will happen, but I would think some legitimate information about the likelihood of this would have came out by now. Have I missed anything?
I’d love a few more Antonioni: LA NOTTE (the Fox Lorber edition disc of this I bought new skips like crazy, and it’s a poor, cropped transfer), RED DESERT, and ZABRISKIE POINT which (as far as I know) is totally out of print. THE PASSENGER is my all-time favorite, but at least it got a decent re-release recently.
The Apu Trilogy would be great. PATHER PANCHALI especially.
Todd Solondz films — any and/or all.
Like Oliver White mentions, I’d love to see more horror selections.
More silent films! Two films that are generally considered to be among the greatest works of the silent cinema era are Victor Sjostrom’s (you know him from Wild Strawberries) THE WIND with Lilian Gish (possibly her greatest performance) and F.W. Murnau’s SUNRISE. Neither one is available on DVD, and only on old out-of-print VHS copies. If they could get Murnau’s FAUST that would be great, too, but at least Kino put out a decent edition of that one.
Oh! And MAN WITH THE MOVIE CAMERA would be great, too. Surprisingly, the Image Entertainment edition of this film is better than Kino’s, but I’d love to see Criterion do this one, too. (Silent film buff, here.)
Pixote(1981) Directed by Hector Babenco. It is a stunning piece of enlightened juvenile deliquency and has an incredible soundtrack. It is out of print and I await anxiously it being out on DVD. A favourite among directors including Werner Herzog. Oh yes, and all of Andrei Tarkovsky, Werner Herzog, and Bela Tarr please.
Tarkovsky’s Stalker
Gattaca
Catherine Brielat’s Anatomy of Hell
The Woman in the Dunes.
Carlos Saura’s The Hunt / La Caza, about which I can’t speak highly enough.
Magnificent ambersons, Chimes at midnight and Bresson’s A man escaped
The amazing Dutch movie “Simon”, which is my personal favorite.
All of Lynch’s, Kubrick’s, and Jodorowsky’s films.
CHINATOWN,
HAROLD AND MAUDE,
Some Carpenter, Fulci, and Argento would be cool.
Criterion should definitely release a Shirley Clarke box set, she’s a totally underexposed filmmaker and deserves some decent dvd releases and recognition (she won an academy award and was nominated for another) both as an “experimental” filmmaker and documentarian. A collection of her shorts would be great along with some of her most important feature films like: “The Cool World”, “The Connection”, “Portrait Of Jason”, “Robert Frost: A Lover’s Quarrel with the World” etc …
“The Sweet Hereafter.”
Pasolini’s “Trilogy of Life” as a box set would be amazing. . .
The Heiress
City Of God
Gun Crazy
Sigur Ros: Heima
Land Of The Pahroahs
Belle de Jour
Interiors
The Day the Earth Stood Still
The Fearless Vampire Killers
Laura
The Toy Story
The Maltese Falcon
A Night at the Opera
Steamboat Bill Jr.
The Ox-Bow Incident
Pan’s Labyrinth
Repulsion
The Saragossa Manuscript
Eraserhead
Seance on a Wet Afternoon
Shaolin Soccer
Kung Fu Hustle
Sunset Boulevard
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Aguirre: The Wrath of God
To name a few of the top of my head
BREAKING THE WAVES
David
Suspiria: Dario Argento
The Bird with the Crystal Plummage: Dario Argento
The Grey Zone: Tim Blake Nelson
Stalker: Andrei Tarkovsky
All About My Mother: Pedro Almodovar
Persona: Ingmar Bergman
The Sacrifice: Andrei Tarkovsky
Children of Men: Alfonso Cuaron
Three Colors Trilogy and Decalouge: Kryztof Kieslowski